About Désirée
Désirée Schyns read French language and literature and theatre studies at Utrecht University. Following her studies, she worked as a literary translator, editor, and literary journalist. She translated works by Malika Mokeddem, Nancy Huston, Sarah Kofman, Yoko Tawada; and, more recently, Marcel Proust, Hélène Cixous, and Bruno Latour. In the autumn of 1998, she moved to Belgium, where she worked as an assistant in Translation Studies at Hogeschool (University College) Ghent, and took on the coordination of French-Dutch translation classes. She obtained her PhD in 2007 from the University of Amsterdam with a dissertation on the portrayal of the Algerian War of Independence in the fiction of Francophone Algerians. In 2013, she participated in her department’s transition from the Hogeschool to Ghent University, where her teaching assignments included French-Dutch translation and translation studies. Her research focuses on the translation of multilingualism in a postcolonial context, the translation of memory in Francophone literature, and literary memory. In these areas of interest, her publications include the monograph La mémoire littéraire de la guerre d’Algérie dans la fiction algérienne francophone (2012), and articles and chapters on the literary processing of the Algerian war of independence. Additionally, her work as a literary translator often forms the foundation for her research. Schyns is co-editor such works as Denken over poëzie en vertalen: De dichter Cees Nooteboom in vertaling (2018) and Translating Memories of Violent Pasts: Memory Studies and Translation Studies in Dialogue (2023). She has been editor of the translation journal Filter since 2000, in which she regularly publishes; since 2005, she has been the coordinator of the research group TRACE.
Programme
16u00 – 18u00: Emeritus celebration at Blauwe Vogel, De Krook
18u00 – 20u00: Reception at KrookCafé